The poor relationship between Lord Mandelson and his successor as Trade Commissioner is an open secret at the top levels of the Government.

Although he has kept his contempt private, Baroness Ashton of Upholland let her view slip when she was interviewed last year after replacing him. “Everyone has their own style,” she began. “Peter did a fantastic job in my view, but I bring a different style. For some people, that style is more what they’re looking for.”

For those failing to draw the distinction, she added: “I don’t know any oligarchs. I don’t think I’ve ever been on anyone’s yacht.”

It is little surprise, then, that the First Secretary had other choices in mind when it came to deciding who should secure Britain’s place in the new Commission. But the dismay on both sides of the Channel after she was confirmed victorious goes wider than personal animosity.

Even she concedes a fair degree of incredulity. Late on Thursday night, she chose the Kitty O’Shea Irish pub, a well-known haunt of Eurocrats, to celebrate. Bumping into Nigel Farage, the UK Independence Party MEP, she asked whether he was shocked at her appointment. “Not as surprised as you, I suspect,” Mr Farage replied.

Her conciliatory tone on the radio yesterday morning — it might take years to show that she was the best person for the job, she said — reflected an early awareness of the sort of sulphuric briefing taking place back in London. “To think we wanted Blair and we ended up with Cathy Ashton. It’s such an indictment of Gordon,” said one member of the Government.

It appears that her time in the Lords, after being ennobled in 1999, has left her with a string of enemies. When she was elevated to be Leader of the Lords in 2007, one of the first measures was to remove the civil servant staff of Baroness Amos and, with them, decades of collective institutional knowledge. Another move was to lock the interconnecting door between her new office and that of the Chief Whip. She caused consternation by forcing the holder of the office, Lord Grocott, to make an appointment like anyone else.

Such behaviour is said to typify a grand style, according to enemies, who also describe her as very exacting over protocol, particularly at airports.

She has, however, won friends and is extremely gregarious. “A lot of people have underestimated Lady A but just sometimes the good guy wins,” said Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.

Another friend says she prospered in Labour politics through straight-dealing and staying out of the party’s tribal wars. It is said that enmities can be traced to her speaking out in Cabinet against the proposed extension of pre-charge detention to 42 days.

Her pursuit of civil liberties is born of earlier personal experience. In 1984 it emerged that her role in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had earned her notoriety within MI5, who put her under surveillance. She was recorded as “a communist sympathiser” on the ground that she shared a house with a member of the Communist Party.

The baroness and her husband, the pollster Peter Kellner, have been a prominent social couple. “I like to see my friends – and I love cooking, so we have lots of dinner parties,” she told interviewers. “When I get the chance I like going to the theatre and shopping, and with five children aged between 15 and 30, there is always something going on.”

José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, had been pleased that the job of Trade Commissioner had gone to a woman, she said, “because he was trying to get as many women in his Commission as possible. He said I was the person he was thinking of.”

This week Europe’s leaders seem to have agreed.

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